What is the Best Way to Make Developer and QA Relationship Healthy?

Testers the troublemakers

It’s funny, how almost everywhere developers consider testers as the troublemakers. Actually it’s not their fault, no one like to hear faults in his/her own baby. And same thing which we (tester) are doing, of course intention behind that is to deliver quality output to client. Constantly there is bitterness at some point in the game between these two roles. Wonder why? It’s the genre and responsibility of these two roles.

When bug count increases or bugs are severe and it’s causing difficulty for developer to solve that bug, developer get frustrated at the count and even at the person as well. The understanding level between these two roles conflict not only in one place but in many areas.

So how to make a good and understanding relationship between testers and developers?

My experience says that teamwork and friendship are the best solutions. If you could be a good friend of developer then you can challenge him to issues, and for sure that person take it positively and work better. It’s the responsibility of both to ensure that the ultimate output is to work at its best. While the developers should ensure that there are no bugs out of what they develop. The testers should ensure that if there are bugs, those should be given, handled at the correct time and scope, where completion comes in.
When you are a QA and working with a team for long time, the relationship between you and developers becomes friendlier. As a team you are able to work together finding defects beforehand, which is appreciated always. Not only that, sitting together in a discussion of designs and solutions can make the developers to be aware of the different issues and areas to improve quality, thus taking the quality mind-set a step further.
As a tester, you find the defects but it’s always good to share some tactics with developers on how to test the application.  Maybe, this will help the developers to test better before delivering the product. But this can work only if everyone is co-operative enough to look the final target i.e. “to deliver with quality”.

Let’s share your thoughts:

What do you think is the best way to make developer and QA relationship healthy?
Few of my thoughts on this are:
1. Share your strategy with developers. Don’t keep it in mind thinking that you will mark it as an issue at later stage.
2. Try to build friendly relations with developers, so that they can feel comfortable to share anything with you.
3. Keep your issue reporting style positive, it should not hurt someone’s feelings.

You might be a developer or QA, let’s add your thoughts in this discussion. So that our ultimate aim of “delivering quality output” will be achieved together.